Navjot Singh Sidhu is unhappy. The cricketer-turned-commentator-turned-politician has spent more than a decade in politics and was the Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament from Amritsar between 2004 and 2014. Yet he has just quit the Rajya Sabha, to which the BJP nominated him only earlier this year.
On Monday, Sidhu addressed a press conference explaining just why he is so angry.
"I was asked to not even look at Punjab. How can I quit my roots? This is the fourth time it happened, and it was hard to accept this time," Sidhu said, claiming that the BJP leadership – despite nominating him to the Rajya Sabha and inducting him into the party's Punjab core committee – insisted that he stay away from the state.
As unhappy as he is though, Navjot Singh Sidhu is also indecisive. That may be a somewhat unfair judgment to make for someone who has just quit the Rajya Sabha, a decision that couldn't have been easy, but had apparently been bubbling away for some time.
As soon as his quitting was announced, media speculation already concluded that Sidhu would quit the BJP, join the Aam Aadmi Party and lead it to victory as the chief ministerial candidate for next year's Punjab elections.
Then someone had to quietly remind the media, and the many excited AAP fans online, that Sidhu and his wife Navjot Kaur Sidhu, a BJP Member of Legislative Assembly in Punjab, had not yet left the BJP.
This was confirmed by the party's state president on Sunday.
And on Monday, despite his angry press conference with lots of Sidhuisms and third-person references, Sidhu did not say anything about leaving the BJP.
Moreover, he said nothing about the Aam Aadmi Party.
To recap: Sidhu has been annoyed at the state of affairs in Punjab politics for some time now. He's very well regarded in Amritsar, which he represented in Parliament for 10 years, but in 2014 he was asked to make way for Arun Jaitley, who managed to lose the seat despite a Narendra Modi wave.
Much of this is attributed to Sidhu's acrimony with the Shiromani Akali Dal, the ruling partner of the BJP in the state. Sidhu in fact had vowed to stay away from Punjab party work until the BJP parted ways with SAD, a demand that is reflected in the BJP's Punjab unit as well. That the SAD is believed to be deeply corrupt and will face a strong wave of anti-incumbency in next year's election only made Sidhu's point stronger. Yet, despite this, the BJP chose to soldier on with the SAD and, according to him, told Sidhu to stay away from the state.
"After winning four elections, if I am told that stay away from Punjab... I ask why? Am I guilty of something? Have I done anything wrong? How can they expect me to stay away from Punjab?"
The question of course is: what comes next? The Aam Aadmi Party has been making waves in the state and many expect it to seriously compete to form government, in part because of the anti-incumbency as well as the Congress' shoddy organisation. Adding Sidhu would also give it a recognisable face who is liked in the state.
The difficulty for the party would be accepting a strong, independent politician who might want to do things his own way. AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal has an authoritarian streak and is not one to brook much dissent, but he would have a hard time reining in someone like Sidhu.
AAP, and many of its supporters are evidently excited at the prospect of having Sidhu campaign for them in Punjab, but is the party stable enough to absorb a whole new power center?
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